Female artists have been involved in making art in most times and places. Often certain media are associated with women, particularly textile arts; however, these gender roles in art change in different cultures and communities. Many art forms dominated by women have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft, as opposed to fine art.[1]

Women artists faced challenges due to gender biases in the mainstream fine art world.[1] They have often encountered difficulties in training, travelling and trading their work, and gaining recognition.

Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists and art historians created a Feminist art movement, that overtly addresses the role of women in the art world and explores women in art history.[1]

There are no records of who the artists of the prehistoric eras were, but the studies of many early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists indicate that women often were the principal artisans in the cultures considered as Neolithic, creating their pottery, textiles, baskets, and jewelry. Collaboration on large projects was typical. Extrapolation to the artwork and skills of the Paleolithic follows the same understanding of the cultures known and studied through archaeology. Cave paintings exist that bear the handprints of women and children as well as those with the handprints of men.

"For about three thousand years, the women – and only the women – of Mithila have been making devotional paintings of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that this art is the expression of the most genuine aspect of Indian civilization."[2]

In the earliest records of western cultures, few individuals are mentioned, although women are depicted in all of the art, some showing their labors as artists. Ancient references by Homer, Cicero, and Virgil mention the roles of prominent women in textiles, poetry, and music and other cultural activities, without discussion of individual artists in the culture.

Among the earliest historical records of Europe concerning individual artists, Pliny the Elder wrote about a number of Greek women who were painters, including Helena of Egypt, daughter of Timon of Egypt,[3][4] Some modern critics posit that Battle of Issus might not have been the work of Philoxenus, but of Helena of Egypt. One of the few named women painters who might have worked in Ancient Greece,[5][6] she was reputed to have produced a painting of the battle of Issus which hung in the Temple of Peace during the time of Vespasian.[7] Other women include Timarete, Eirene, Kalypso, Aristarete, Iaia, and Olympias. While only some of their work survives, in Ancient Greek pottery there is a caputi hydria in The Torno Collection in Milan[8] attributed to the Leningrad painter from circa 460-450 B.C. that shows women working alongside men in a workshop where both painted vases.[9]

In the early Medieval period, women often worked alongside men. Manuscript illuminations, embroideries, and carved capitals from the period clearly demonstrate examples of women at work in these arts. Documents show that they also were brewers, butchers, wool merchants, and iron mongers. Artists of the time period, including women, were from a small subset of society whose status allowed them freedom from these more strenuous types of work. Women who were artists, often were of two literate classes, either wealthy aristocratic women or nuns. Women in the former category often created embroideries and textiles; those in the later category often produced illuminations.

There were a number of embroidery workshops in England at the time, particularly at Canterbury and Winchester; Opus Anglicanum or English embroidery was already famous across Europe – a 13th-century papal inventory counted over two hundred pieces. It is presumed that women were almost entirely responsible for this production. One of the most famous embroideries of the Medieval period is the Bayeux Tapestry, of cloth embroidered with wool that is 230 feet long and which narrates the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England. The Bayeux Tapestry may have been created in either a commercial workshop, by a royal or aristocratic lady and her retinue, or a workshop in a nunnery. In the 14th century, a royal workshop is documented, based at the Tower of London, and there may have been other earlier arrangements.

Manuscript illumination affords us many of the named artists of the Medieval Period including Ende, a 10th-century Spanish nun; Guda, a 12th-century German nun; and Claricia, a 12th-century laywoman in a Bavarian scriptorium. These women, and many more unnamed illuminators, benefited from the nature of convents as the major loci of learning for women in the period and the most tenable option for intellectuals among them.

In many parts of Europe, with the Gregorian Reforms of the 11th century and the rise in feudalism, women faced many strictures that they did not face in the Early Medieval period. With these changes in society, the status of the convent changed. In the British Isles, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the gradual decline of the convent as a seat of learning and a place where women could gain power. Convents were made subsidiary to male abbots, rather than being headed by an abbess, as they had previously.

In Germany, however, under the Ottonian Dynasty, convents retained their position as institutions of learning. This might be partially because they were often headed and populated by unmarried women from the royal and aristocratic families. Therefore, it is in Germany where the greatest late Medieval period work by women emerges, as exemplified by that of Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) is a particularly fine example of a German Medieval intellectual and artist. She wrote The Divine Works of a Simple Man, The Meritorious Life, sixty-five hymns, a miracle play, and a long treatise of nine books on the different natures of trees, plants, animals, birds, fish, minerals, and metals. From an early age, she claimed to have visions. When the Papacy supported these claims by the headmistress, her position as an important intellectual was galvanized. The visions became part of one of her seminal works in 1142, Scivias(Know the Ways of the Lord), which consists of thirty-five visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. The illustrations in the Scivias, as exemplified in the first illustration, showing Hildegarde experiencing visions while seated in the monastery at Bingen, differ greatly from others created in Germany during the same period. They are characterized by bright colors, emphasis on line, and simplified forms. While Hildegard likely did not pen the images, their idiosyncratic nature leads one to believe they were created under her close supervision.

The 12th century saw the rise of the city in Europe, along with the rise in trade, travel, and universities. These changes in society also engendered changes in the lives of women. Women were allowed to head their husbands' businesses, if they were widowed. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is one such case. During this time, women also were allowed to be part of some artisan guilds. Guild records show that women were particularly active in the textile industries in Flanders and Northern France. Medieval manuscripts have many marginalia depicting women with spindles. In England, women were responsible for creating Opus Anglicanum, or rich embroideries for ecclesiastical or secular use on clothes and various types of hangings. Women also became more active in illumination. A number of women likely worked alongside their husbands or fathers, including the daughter of Maître Honoré and the daughter of Jean le Noir. By the 13th century, most illuminated manuscripts were being produced by commercial workshops, and by the end of the Middle Ages, when production of manuscripts had become an important industry in certain centres, women seem to have represented a majority of the artists and scribes employed, especially in Paris. The movement to printing, and of book illustration to the printmaking techniques of woodcut and engraving, where women seem to have been little involved, represented a setback to the progress of women artists.

This is the first period in Western history in which a number of secular female artists gained international reputations. The rise in women artists during this period may be attributed to major cultural shifts. One such shift was a move toward humanism, a philosophy affirming the dignity of all people, that became central to Renaissance thinking and helped raise the status of women. In addition, the identity of the individual artist in general was regarded as more important; significant artists whose identity is unknown virtually cease from this period.

Two important texts, On Famous Women and The City of Women, illustrate this cultural change. Boccaccio, a 14th-century humanist, wrote De mulieribus claris (Latin for On Famous Women) (1135–59) which was a collection of biographies of women. Among the 104 biographies he included was that of Thamar (or Thmyris), an ancient Greek vase painter. Curiously, among the 15th-century manuscript illuminations of On Famous Women, Thamar was depicted painting a self-portrait or perhaps, painting a small image of the Virgin and Child.

Christine de Pizan, who was a remarkable late medieval French writer, rhetorician, and critic, wrote Book of the City of Ladies in 1405 about an allegorical city in which independent women lived free from the slander of men. In her work she included real women artists, such as Anastaise, who was considered one of the best Parisian illuminators, although none of her work has survived. Other humanist texts led to increased education for Italian women.

The most notable of these was Il Cortegiano or The Courtier by 16th-century Italian humanist Baldassare Castiglione. This enormously popular work stated that men and women should be educated in the social arts. His influence made it acceptable for women to engage in the visual, musical, and literary arts. Thanks to Castiglione, this was the first period of renaissance history in which noblewomen were able to study painting.

Sofonisba Anguissola was the most successful of these minor aristocrats who first benefited from humanist education and then went on to recognition as painters.[14]

Artists who were not noblewomen were affected by the rise in humanism as well. In addition to conventional subject matter, artists such as Lavinia Fontana and Caterina van Hemessen began to depict themselves in self-portraits, not just as painters but also as musicians and scholars, thereby highlighting their well-rounded education.

Along with the rise in Humanism, there was a shift from craftsmen to artists. Artists, unlike earlier craftsmen, were now expected to have knowledge of perspective, mathematics, ancient art, and study of the human body. In the late Renaissance the training of artists began to move from the master's workshop to the Academy, and women began a long struggle, not resolved until the late 19th century, to gain full access to this training.

Study of the human body required working from male nudes and corpses. This was considered essential background for creating realistic group scenes. Women were generally barred from training from male nudes, and therefore they were precluded from creating such scenes, required for the large-scale religious compositions that received the most prestigious commissions.

Although many aristocratic women had access to some training in art, though without the benefit of figure drawing from nude male models, most of those women chose marriage over a career in art. This was true for example, of two of Sofonisba Anguissola's sisters. The women who are recognized as artists in this period were either nuns or children of painters. Of the few who emerge as Italian artists in the 15th century, all who are known today are associated with convents.

Women artists during this period in Italy, even those trained by their family, seem somewhat unusual. In certain parts of Europe, particularly northern France and Flanders, however, it was more common for children of both genders to enter into their father's profession. In fact, in the Low Countries where women had more freedom, there were a number of artists in the Renaissance who were women. For example, the records of the Guild of Saint Luke in Bruges show that, not only did they admit women as practicing members, but also that by the 1480s twenty-five percent of its members were women (many probably working as manuscript illuminators).

As in the Renaissance Period, many women among the Baroque artists came from artist families. Artemisia Gentileschi is an excellent example of this. She was trained by her father, Orazio Gentileschi, and she worked alongside him on many of his commissions. Luisa Roldán was trained in her father's (Pedro Roldán) sculpture workshop.

Women artists in this period began to change the way women were depicted in art. Many of the women working as artists in the Baroque era were not able to train from nude models, who were always male, but they were very familiar with the female body. Women such as Elisabetta Sirani created images of women as conscious beings rather than detached muses. One of the best examples of this novel expression is in Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith beheading Holofernes, in which Judith is depicted as a strong woman determining her own destiny. While other artists, including Botticelli and the more traditional woman, Fede Galizia, depicted the same scene with a passive Judith, in her novel treatment, Gentileschi's Judith appears to be an able actor in the task at hand. Action is the essence of it and another painting by her of Judith leaving the scene.

Still life emerged as an important genre around 1600, particularly in the Netherlands. Women were at the forefront of this painting trend. This genre was particularly suited to women, as they could access the materials for still life readily. In the North, these practitioners included Clara Peeters, a painter of banketje or breakfast pieces, and scenes of arranged luxury goods; Maria van Oosterwijk, the internationally renowned flower painter; and Rachel Ruysch, a painter of visually charged flower arrangements. In other regions, still life was less common, but there were important women artists in the genre including Giovanna Garzoni, who created realistic vegetable arrangements on parchment, and Louise Moillon, whose fruit still life paintings were noted for their brilliant colors.

In many countries of Europe, the Academies were the arbiters of style. The Academies also were responsible for training artists, exhibiting artwork, and, inadvertently or not, promoting the sale of art. Most Academies were not open to women. In France, for example, the powerful Academy in Paris had 450 members between the 17th century and the French Revolution, and only fifteen were women. Of those, most were daughters or wives of members. In the late 18th century, the French Academy resolved not to admit any women at all.

The pinnacle of painting during the period was history painting, especially large scale compositions with groups of figures depicting historical or mythical situations. In preparation to create such paintings, artists studied casts of antique sculptures and drew from male nudes. Women had limited, or no access to this Academic learning, and as such there are no extant large-scale history paintings by women from this period. Some women made their name in other genres such as portraiture.

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun used her experience in portraiture to create an allegorical scene, Peace Bringing Back Plenty, which she classified as a history painting and used as her grounds for admittance into the Academy. After the display of her work, it was demanded that she attend formal classes, or lose her license to paint. She became a court favourite, and a celebrity, who painted over forty self-portraits, which she was able to sell.[14]

In England, two women, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, were founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768. Kauffmann helped Maria Cosway enter the Academy. Although Cosway went on to gain success as a painter of mythological scenes, both women remained in a somewhat ambivalent position at the Royal Academy, as evidenced by the group portrait of The Academicians of the Royal Academy by Johan Zoffany now in The Royal Collection. In it, only the men of the Academy are assembled in a large artist studio, together with nude male models. For reasons of decorum given the nude models, the two women are not shown as present, but as portraits on the wall instead.[16] The emphasis in Academic art on studies of the nude during training remained a considerable barrier for women studying art until the 20th century, both in terms of actual access to the classes and in terms of family and social attitudes to middle-class women becoming artists. After these three, no woman became a full member of the Academy until Laura Knight in 1936, and women were not admitted to the Academy's schools until 1861.

By the late 18th century, there were important steps forward for artists who were women. In Paris, the Salon, the exhibition of work founded by the Academy, became open to non-Academic painters in 1791, allowing women to showcase their work in the prestigious annual exhibition. Additionally, women were more frequently being accepted as students by famous artists such as Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

During the century, access to academies and formal art training expanded more for women in Europe and North America. The British Government School of Design, which later became the Royal College of Art, admitted women from its founding in 1837, but only into a "Female School" which was treated somewhat differently, with "life"- classes consisting for several years of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools finally admitted women beginning in 1861, but students drew initially only draped models. However, other schools in London, including the Slade School of Art from the 1870s, were more liberal. By the end of the century women were able to study the naked, or very nearly naked, figure in many Western European and North American cities.

The Society of Female Artists (now called The Society of Women Artists) was established in 1855 in London and has staged annual exhibitions since 1857, when 358 works were shown by 149 women, some using a pseudonym.[18]

Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), perhaps inspired by her life-classes of armoured figures at the Government School, was one of the first women to become famous for large history paintings, specializing in scenes of military action, usually with many horses, most famously Scotland Forever!, showing a cavalry charge at Waterloo.

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1865–1933), was a Scottish artist whose works helped define the "Glasgow Style" of the 1890s and early 20th century. She often collaborated with her husband, the architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in works that had influence in Europe. She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900 Vienna Secession, where her work is thought to have had an influence on the Secessionists such as Gustav Klimt.[22]

Georgia O'Keeffe was born in the late 19th century. She became known for her paintings, featuring flowers, bones, and landscapes of New Mexico. In 1927, Dod Proctor's painting Morning was voted Picture of the Year in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and bought by the Daily Mail for the Tate gallery.[27] Its popularity resulted in its showing in New York and a two-year tour of Britain.[28]

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation. Her work shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She describes herself as an "obsessive artist". In November 2008, Christie's auction house New York sold her 1959 painting No. 2 for $5,100,000, the record price in 2008 for a work by a living female artist.[31]

During 2010–2011, Pompidou Centre in Paris presented its curators' choice of contemporary women artists in a three-volume's exhibition named elles@Centrepompidou.[32] The museum showed works of major women artists from its own collection.

An interesting genre of women's art is women's environmental art. As of December 2013, the Women Environmental Artists Directory listed 307 women environmental artists, such as Marina DeBris, Vernita Nemec and Betty Beaumont. DeBris uses beach trash to raise awareness of beach and ocean pollution.[33] and to educate children about beach trash.[34] Nemec recently used junk mail to demonstrate the complexity of modern life.[35] Beaumont has been described as a pioneer of environmental art[36] and uses art to challenge our beliefs and actions.[37]

Women artists in art history has often been mis-characterized, both intentionally and unintentially by the times; often dictated by the socio-political mores of the era. [38] There are a number of issues that lie behind this, for example:

Scarcity of biographical information

Anonymity, women artists were often most active in artistic expressions that were not typically signed. During the Early Medieval period, manuscript illumination was a pursuit of monks and nuns alike.[39]

Painters' Guilds - in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, many women worked in the workshop system. These women worked under the auspices of a male workshop head, very often the artist's father. Until the twelfth century there is no record of a workshop headed by a woman, when a widow would be allowed to assume her husband's former position.[citation needed] Often guild rules would forbid women from attaining the various ranks leading to master,[40][41] so they remained "unofficial".

Naming Conventions - the convention whereby women take their husbands' last names impedes research, especially for example, in some cases where a work of unknown origin may be signed only with a first initial and last name. Even the simplest biographical statements may be misleading. For example, one might say that Jane Frank was born in 1918, but in reality, she was Jane Schenthal at birth — Jane "Frank" didn't exist until over twenty years later.[42] Examples like this create a discontinuity of identity for women artists.

Mistaken identity and incorrect attribution - in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, work by women was often reassigned. Some unscrupulous dealers even went so far as to alter signatures, as in the case of some paintings by Judith Leyster (1630) which were reassigned to Frans Hals.[43][44][45]Marie-Denise Villers (1774–1821) was a French painter, who specialized in portraits. Villers was a student of the French painter Girodet. Villers' most famous painting, Young Woman Drawing, (1801) is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting was attributed to Jacques-Louis David at one time, but was later realized to be Villers' work. It is considered to be a self-portrait of the artist.[46] By contrast, in the late twentieth century, in a rush to acquire paintings by women, there have been cases of paintings wrongly attributed to women.[citation needed]